NYCC 2015 – Day 3 – A Tenno’s Day Out

The third day of NYCC has come and gone, and this day was easily the most memorable day of the entire event, because this day was all about Warframe, the ever popular Sci-fi shooter created by Digital Extremes. They had so much planned for NYCC, including the Wikia Fantasy Foods truck, the Developer & Community Panel, and the VIP After Party for those lucky few that managed to get a ticket. My entire day was focused on this special game, so it’s only appropriate for me to call this daily entry: “Tenno’s Day Out”.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the Wikia Fantasy Food’s truck was giving away free samples of various fantasy foods, including “Greedy Milk” from Warframe. Getting your hands on the free samples, however, was a bit of a challenge, as they were only giving them out in limited quantities. To ensure that I wouldn’t lose out on a sample, I showed up to the truck one hour before serving time so I could snag a ticket. Once they started serving and I was waiting on line, a familiar face from the Warframe team was seen handing out headbands.

Indeed, Rebecca Ford, Community Manager and the voice of The Lotus was meeting and greeting Warframe fans, encouraging everyone to check out the upcoming panel. After chatting with her for a bit, I reached the end of the line and ordered my Greedy Milk.
So with drink in hand, I went back to the lounge before giving it a try. Now prepare yourselves… for the first (and probably last) time in OnRPG/MMOhuts history, we’re going to have a little food review.
So as mentioned before, Greedy Milk isn’t so much an actual food item in Waframe, but rather a Grineer metaphor from General Sargas Ruk about crushing the blood from the skulls of their Corpus enemies. So how does that translate into a drink?

As much as I love anything with cookies and cream, the taste of milkshake wasn’t very adequate, as the mixture of vanilla ice cream and chocolate cookie wafers were mixed together with too much cookie and not enough ice cream. Not only was the consistency of the ingredients off, but the preparation of the milkshake was also poorly handled. The temperature of the milkshake was over frozen to the point where chunky flakes were formed inside the drink, making it very hard to sip through a straw.

This greedy milk concoction could have been passable despite the over mixed ingredients, but the thick and flaky ice cream due to over-freezing really made the whole milkshake taste a bit fowl, so I honestly wouldn’t recommend this frozen dessert at all. If I would have to give this drink a score, with 1 being bad and 5 being great, I’d give it a definite 2 out of 5.

Now I’m not as disappointed that Greedy Milk ended up losing to Gravity Fall’s Mable Juice in the semi-final rounds.

Despite the unsatisfactory Greedy Milk, next up was the Warframe community panel. To make sure that I wouldn’t miss out on any good seats, I waited at the entrance line for two whole hours before getting in, and it was easily worth the wait, as more of the Warframe staff came around to chat with their fans, psyche the crowds up and take a few pictures.

Once the panel started, they jumped straight into a quick demonstration video that showcases what warframe is all about, such as combat, archwing and the warframes themselves, just to give some participants in the audience a clue if they’ve never played the game before. After that, they started things slow by telling everyone how much the game has grown since its initial release and how Warframe was literally the game that saved Digital Extremes from going under.

Which was all well and good, but it wasn’t all that exciting, until they revealed this:

(I apologize for the out-of-focus photos. Trying to take pictures and liveblog at the same time isn’t easy, apparently)

A mystery warframe appeared on the screen. The crowd and I was super excited to know what it was. Without further delay, the mystery warframe was revealed…

The next warframe in development is going to be an archer-based warframe who can summon a bow & arrow weapon in the same sense as Excalibur’s Exalted Blade or Mesa’s Peacemaker. She’ll also have the ability to manipulate enemy fire in midair and redirect those attacks towards enemies. While the concept seems neat, it sounds a bit like another version of the Mag warframe, but time will tell. After the new warframe reveal, concept art of the upcoming Orokin Moonbase was shown off. While it looked just as cool as ever, still no in-game footage of the tileset was shown. Next, a handful of community created warframe skins were shown off, along with a completed premium skin for Rhino and the previously announced Wukong warframe, which will be released sometime in November.

Speaking of Wukong, the Monkey King: the Digital Extremes team then hosted a quick Q&A, and a cosplayer dressed up as Son Wukong was there to ask a few questions.

As for the questions asked by the fans, most answers didn’t really give us more insight into the game’s current state or future, except one interesting question regarding Syndicates and their purpose in the game. It was suggested that Syndicates did not serve much of a purpose in the grand scheme of Warframe’s ongoing story (which I completely agreed with). A user asked if it would be possible to begin a storyline that involves the Syndicates going to war against each other, and Steve answered that question stating that it’s a good idea, but for now, they’re going to focus on the upcoming sentient faction which will be the center conflict for Update 18.

With all things said and done, the panel ended with much praise, except with one of the parting gifts that were left for us, which was a voucher for 75 free platinum. It would have been a nice gift for attending, but the code was only redeemable for PS4 users, and with most Warframe players in audience being a part of the glorious #PCMasterRace, the gift didn’t sit too well with them.

After the panel, the VIP After Party was up, and man, this was easily one of the best parts of my NYCC 2015 experience, as the entire place was rented out for fellow tenno to hang out, enjoy free food and beer and get some personal time with the Digital Extremes team. They also handed out MORE free gifts, including more headbands, PS4 platinum vouchers and even Excalibur symbiotes. Too cool.

After a long night of drinking, Scott proposed a toast along with a speech to all the Warframe fans out there. To give players one last treat, Scott ended up revealing the next primed warframe will be Sayrn. Of course, Rebecca then blares in stating that the next primed warframe isn’t revealed yet. Knowing DE’s track record, that probably won’t be the case, but who knows.

Overall it was an incredibly epic night, and one that makes me look forward to playing Warframe when I return home from New York.